A Toy Store(y)

This article was used as the starting point for a series of seven analyses that comprise a special issue on entrepreneurial narrative. This article was given to scholars with the title “A Toy Store(y)” with no other identifying characteristics. The story describes the founding and operation of a toy store in Rutland Vermont in 1965. The story describes the process of realizing an opportunity, identifying and acquiring resources to pursue this opportunity, involving and managing others, and adapting to unforeseen circumstances as new competitive conditions are encountered.     

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE INCREMENTAL PREDICTIVE ABILITY OF BEAVER'S NAIVE OPERATING FLOW MEASURE USING FOUR-STATE ORDINAL MODELS OF FINANCIAL DISTRESS

The purpose of this paper is to determine why net income adjusted for depreciation and amortization (NOF) is a strong predictor of financial distress. This paper develops four-state ordinal financial distress models lagged one, two, and three years before financial distress to test NOF, instead of using dichotomous bankrupt and nonbankrupt models. The results of this paper suggest that NOF is a strong predictor of financial distress because NOF is an alternative measure of economic income, not because NOF is a naive measure of operating cash flow. For this study, NOF is even a better measure of economic income than net income.     

Causes of cross-autocorrelation in security returns: Transaction costs versus information quality

We examine empirically the role of transaction costs and information quality as causes of cross-autocorrelations in security returns. Nonsynchronous trading influences are addressed by forming weekly returns based on averages of closing inside bid and ask quotations for NMS securities. Stock return volatility scaled by the bid-ask spread is employed as a proxy for transaction costs and trading volume is used as a measure of information quality. We find evidence that both transaction costs and information quality may contribute to cross-autocorrelations, but that information quality dominates transaction costs in explaining cross-autocorrelations after controlling for autocorrelation influences.     

RELATIVE STOCK PRICES AND THE FIRM SIZE EFFECT

A stock's relative price ratio, defined as the ratio of the current price to the average of the highest and lowest prices over some holding period, is shown to be a better predictor of future stock returns than firm size. The price ratio has an even stronger January seasonality than does firm size. After controlling for price ratio variations, firm size has no significant relationship to return. The abnormal returns for the price ratio effect are consistent with those predicted by optimal tax selling considerations.     

An explanation of why shareholders' losses are so large after drug recalls

Recent studies show firms suffering drug recalls experience security losses many times larger than any reasonable measure of their direct cost. We discover that the implied standard deviation of stock returns from the Black-Scholes option pricing model significantly increases after a drug recall. The implied standard deviation provides a good proxy for the stock's ex ante beta. The higher systematic risk after a product recall must raise the discount rate used by investors. After a recall, stock prices are reduced in line with the lower expected future earnings and are further reduced because of a higher discount rate.     

Industrial salesforce satisfaction and performance with Herzberg's theory

Sales managers are seeking answers to facilitate the salesforce motivational process. This study empirically tested one of the most prominant motivational theories, which, some authorities consider the leading work formulated on the idea that satisfaction leads to performance. This study found no support for Herzberg's dichotomy or the correlation between satisfaction and performance.